Newsletter April 2018

Waves 2018 – What’s next?

IUC wishes you a happy Easter – and spring time – and promises bustling agendas as always.
Waves 2018 has kept us busy with a load of responsibilities and issues to sort through. An important milestone has been reached with regards to the Erasmus + application, in the end we had an impressive number of European partners on board – we are grateful for their participation and thank them for their support. Now we are waiting for the result and ready to embark on the next stage of what has grown into one of IUC’s most popular projects. A tentative program has already been released, along with a brief introduction to the workshops, which participants will be able to sign up for shortly. Updates will be provided very soon with the introduction of the project website and invites for participants from the partner countries.

MEP BSR Sønderborg DK – Autumn 2018

We are ready and aiming at returning to Sønderborg, soon introducing the next MEP BSR
conference, hosted by IUC, the MEP BSR organization and partners, planned for the beginning of October 2018. It will take place in the very city that hosted two of our Waves projects (in 2013 and 2015). Negotiations are still ongoing, but the program and session will be introduced in Ilawa, Poland in a few weeks, and we cross our fingers for success and support.

MEP BSR Upcoming Session

As announced earlier, the next MEP BSR session will take place in Ilawa, Poland, from the 10th to
the 15th of April. Young people from 11 countries will meet to discuss important European issues such as: the issues of separatism in modern Europe, the future shape of the EU, models of education in advanced societies, income disparity and the question of military integration in Europe. The session will be run entirely by young people, and the outcomes of the committee work and debates/voting at the General Assembly will be looked forward to eagerly.
Details about next month’s conference can be found on the official MEP BSR website. For a direct link to the program, click here.

EUNET

In February we received bad news from the EUNET president Mr. Richard Stock. The EU Commission has decided not to support the network financially any more. RS states in his letter that the EUNET secretariat will be closed consequently, it assisted 78 organisations in 25 countries. A very sad decision!! The EUNET board is determined to continue its work with the support of members. IUC was one of the founding “fathers” of EUNET, we have been active in the network for more than 10 years and will of course assist in possible ways to keep the network going. More info at a later stage.

Youth on the Move/Sønderborg 2018 The Model European Parliament in Sønderborg was a great success – Opening Ceremony in the castle, professional committee work, sightseeing in beautiful weather, performance in the new culture house/library, parliament in Alsion and much more – students and teachers had a very good time, staying with host families and in…

Waves of Democracy 2018 – Next Steps An academy that has garnered heaps of praise and is considered IUC’s signature piece on a mosaic of national and international long-term youth projects in the fields of teaching/learning, non-formal (political) education, citizenship and integration, has moved past the initiation stage and we are now working on turning…

Waves of Democracy – Berlin, scheduled for May 18 – 23, 2018 The tentative dates of WoD 2018 have been settled, in collaboration with the European Academy in Berlin and our project managers – Ifor Molenhuis, Andreas Guidi and Christin Knüpfer. An informal meeting was recently held in Berlin between IUC´s director Nina Nørgaard and…

Rome Meeting 2017, EUNET On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, our partner organisation, EUNET, held its 2017 spring meeting in the Italian capital, where Ifor Molenhuis represented IUC. The question of how do we tackle the challenges of Euroscepticism and Nationalism in our educational work, and what role EUNET…

Off to an auspicious start We have had quite a charged up first month of 2017 – reflecting, considering and generating new ideas that will set the tone for our project work for the year ahead. Of course, we would prioritise projects that are already underway and rest on established foundations, though we have dabbled with the idea…

“Teamwork makes the dreamwork” The 45th session of Model European Parliament, held in Copenhagen from the 29th of October to the 5th of November, is a testament to the latter. We saw the coming together of bright young minds from 30 countries across Europe and beyond to discuss some pressing issues which appear on the…

A project over which we laboured long and hard is about to take shape in concrete form and we are delighted to report that we have resumed work on MEP Copenhagen. MEP Copenhagen: October 29 – November 5 Staff of IUC-Europe has been proud to actively involve itself in the lengthy preparations of Model…

Summing up the merry month of May, we present you with our findings from Youth on the Move and IUC’s work on MEP Copenhagen, which is months away from completion but well under way. 6th of May We kicked the month off splendidly by hosting our long awaited seminar – Youth on the Move.…

This month’s briefing will address IUC’s upcoming seminar, Youth on the Move, in further detail by lifting the curtain on what is currently taking place behind closed doors. For this purpose, we have Ifor Molenhuis - a key figure in the planning and execution of the seminar - sit with us and discuss the preparatory…

How do we tackle the challenges of Migration, Euroscepticism and Nationalism in the educational work we are engaged in? That question would be driving the agenda of a seminar, hosted by our partner organisation – EUNET, which is to take place from the 9th to the 11th of March in Vienna.

In the second instalment of our monthly briefings, we will introduce the reader to two other characters, who stood behind the successful planning, execution, monitoring and closure of Waves of Democracy, namely Andreas Guidi and Christin Knüpfer.

The following section is where I am supposed to broadcast my message and share my experiences.For the sake of simplicity, I will do my best to keep it short and sweet with a touch of personality. I hope that you find our monthly briefing interesting and useful.